


How to Die a Hero

by pajamaprodigy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pajamaprodigy/pseuds/pajamaprodigy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is there that is worth the life of Dirk (bro) Strider?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Die a Hero

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a prompt i found here: http://the7cutekittens.tumblr.com/post/36926557253/guys-can-you-find-me-some-sadstuck-dave-strider-or

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you are pretty sure that maybe some day, you could be a hero. You are pretty sure that one day, you could save the world, save everyone. Save someone you love. You’d be willing to die for that. Chop off your own head. 

But you don’t want to die like this, not tonight. Not because your stepfather will eventually find the gun he dropped in his drunkenness. Not with tears mixing with the snot and the blood on your face. A hero's death won't be pretty, but this is nothing. Just another dead homo, another story for the local paper, another little memorial of tinsel and posterboard "R.I.P"s that would warp in the rain. It wouldn't do anything. This is not how you want to die. 

You don’t want to die in January, either, when you are in the bus station, with fifty-two dollars and twenty cents in your pocket that you hope won't get stollen. It doesn't, and you -inside of your living breathing body, with its heart pumping 7 pints of blood through its 4 chambers, with your 3 pound brain that has nearly memorized the 4 books on robotics from your highschool library- get on the bus because you want to live. You can't live like that though. You put your backpack in your lap. This is an adventure, you tell yourself. This is how to be a hero. This is how to live. 

You don't want to die really, when you lie in your sleeping bag in the youth hostel, unable to think about music or machinery or anything except for what a failure you are. Even when you feel so heavy, so dull, so lost, you don't want to die. You will keep on existing. You will deal with it. Deal with it. Be a hero. 

You had been living in Austin for three years, you were eighteen, and the meteors were hitting more frequently. You knew one was coming and you knew it would be different. They were dangerous, and you didn't want to die, but you wanted to be there. Maybe this is how to be a hero, you thought. Maybe this is why I'm alive. You brought some shades, just in case.

It was a kid. A fucking kid. What the fuck were you going to do with a kid.

So you raised him. You started taking your work with the puppet shit seriously to feed him. You taught him how to rap, and be ironic, and remain calm in the face of total impending doom. You taught him how to fight with swords. You had a life. You were his hero, maybe, kind of, you hoped so. But maybe this wasn't your story. 

Maybe being alive was your story and now it was his. Having a kid, training him, feeding him, caring about him will do that to you. Maybe living to be here, to be his bro, to be yourself was enough. Maybe you already are a hero.

You end up dying like a hero. You end up with a sword through your middle, because you went through the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, through the door of a green house that hid a much darker world than the one where you lived. The thing is, you knew this place was here all along. You knew it when your mom lied about how you got a broken cheek bone and when you went days without food on the road and when you were entirely unable to pull yourself up out of the psychic abyss for months at a time. You knew that you had to fight. You knew he would have to fight too. You knew you would have to be a hero.

At least you died like the hero you wanted to be. You died protecting, or trying to protect, someone you loved. You faced the sword of a villain and lost, but that was ok, because he is still alive and well. You died to save him and his friends you'd never met. You died a hero. Maybe, in another world, you get to chop off your head.


End file.
